The Art of Escaping

by Erin Callahan

  Turns out I was mostly wrong about the second one.

  After I left Café Italiano with Betsy Appleton, my main squeeze, she drove us to Providence Place. She was the Bonnie to my Clyde, but the poor girl had no idea our relationship was a fraudulent criminal enterprise.

  For the record, I fucking hate malls. All those candy-colored displays under blue fluorescent lighting make me yearn for black and white films and the golden glow of energy-sucking incandescent light bulbs. I don’t want to contribute to the destruction of the planet, but some things, like lighting that doesn’t give you a splitting headache, are sacred.

  Betsy parked in the garage, expertly sliding into a compact car spot. She always drove with quiet sophistication, never too fast or too slow. Something about her driving posture was almost debonair—arms relaxed but still diligently at ten and two, shoulders back, neck elongated to swan-like proportions. Sometimes I wanted to buy her driving gloves and a headscarf and some of those big Thelma & Louise sunglasses and take glamour shots in my dad’s prized ’65 Shelby Cobra. But she’d end up making that toothy, I-ate-sunshine-for-breakfast face she makes in all her photos and ruin the mystique.

  Betsy is the kind of good-but-not-too-good, pretty-but-not-too-pretty, smart-but-not-too-smart girl that other girls wish they could hate. They can’t hate her because she might be the nicest person on the planet.

  She reached over and clasped my hand, giving me a toned down version of the I-ate-sunshine-for-breakfast smile.

  “You’re quiet today. What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “Still thinking about that gelato,” I said without skipping a beat. “So refreshing.” Of course this was a lie. I was still thinking about Mattie and her frizzy hair and the zero muskrat’s asses that she gave. And, as I always did in Betsy’s car, I was picturing Betsy behind the wheel of a black Shelby Cobra, her cherry-red lips like a fresh scratch against her alabaster complexion. It killed me that she never wore cherry-red lipstick. Just pinkish gloss that smelled like grapefruit. The only girls at our school who wore real lipstick cut their hair like Bettie Paige, rolled their eyes when they got paired up with me for group assignments, and called me a “jock strap casualty” behind my back.

  Betsy laughed. “I love that they use real vanilla. When I see all those little black flecks I feel like I’m eating real food instead of something gross and synthetic, you know?”

  “Ab-so-tive-ly.”

  “Your coach wouldn’t be mad about all the sugar and saturated fat?”

  “Ha! He’d probably make me do a full hour of suicides and a thousand free throws just to compensate. But it’s summer, so what he doesn’t know won’t kill him.”

  We rode the escalator up to the food court and took a seat at the Johnny Rockets counter. I dig nostalgia more than the average bear, but the fact that Johnny Rockets was in the mall basically negated the retro diner vibe.

  Betsy’s best friend, Meadow Winters, floated over to our stools with a pencil tucked stylishly behind one ear, ready to take our order. For the record, Meadow floated everywhere she went, her size sevens always just whispering along the ground. Meadow and I remained on good terms because I was her BFF’s arm candy, but, even now, I’d sooner jump off the Atwells Ave overpass into I-95 traffic than cross her. It must be her eyes. She has these intense hazel beauties rimmed with subtle black liner that I’m convinced could stop your ticker dead in its tracks if she looked at you the wrong way. Also, not many gals could put on a Johnny Rockets uniform and still look dressed to kill. Meadow rocked that bowtie and silly hat like they’d been handpicked by a personal stylist.

  “What can I get you guys? Milkshakes?” Meadow asked.

  “We already had dessert,” Betsy explained. “Gelato at Café Italiano.”

  This prompted an ooohhh-aaahhh-OMG-fest that lasted, I shit you not, at least three full minutes. I like gelato as much as the next cat, but it hardly deservesthree minutes’ worth of vocal fry.

  Again, I thought of Mattie. Despite being a gelato peddler, she clearly had more interesting things on her mind. Unreadable gals who gave zero muskrat’s asses had no use for vocal fry or three-minute odes to dairy products.

  While Betsy and Meadow moved on to discuss the evening’s plans (a brief appearance at a weed dealer’s party followed by breakfast-for-dinner at IHOP), I allowed myself to fantasize about skipping the shindig and hanging out with Mattie instead. I imagined the two of us speeding down I-95 to the seacoast in my dad’s Shelby while she taught me how to stop being such a chickenshit pansy.

  Here’s where you might think Mattie was right. Me fantasizing about becoming her bosom buddy and trusted confidante could be a cosmic sign that the two of us somehow knew we were about to find ourselves in a cat’s cradle. But the sad truth is this wasn’t even close to the first time I’d daydreamed about a mythical friendship with someone I didn’t even know.

  It happened all the time. With the hipster girl who delivered pizza to my house. With the lady who sat in the last row of the crosstown trolley with an empty cat carrier. With the chubby guy who worked at the city library and wore suspenders to hitch up his ill-fitting skinny jeans. Every time I sat behind the kid with the green mohawk in Physics—and we’re talking genuine mohawk, not some half-hearted fauxhawk—I pictured the two of us getting splifficated on Kool Aid spiked with cheap vodka and TP-ing our teacher’s house. Sometimes I even brought my semi-imaginary friends together in my mind. I figured the catless trolley rider would probably get a big ol’ kick out of green mohawk kid. The three of us could take the trolley to Fox Point, enjoy the sea breeze, then steal a Chihuahua from the dog park for the lady’s empty cat carrier.

  On days when I wanted to tear off my own skin and wave it around like a wacky flag of desperation, my imaginary friends and I time traveled to imaginary places. Hipster pizza girl (I’d nicknamed her Val), chubby librarian (a.k.a. Schmitty) and I donned our finest, gunned the Delorean to eighty-eight and got our drink on at a charming little juice joint full of bootleggers and cats hip enough to know the password (the password, by-the-by, was “horsefeathers”).

  Val would sit on her perch at the bar, wrapped in a red cocoon coat with an ermine fur collar and threads of gold lamé that sparkled under the chandeliers. “You’re on the up and up, bub,” she’d say to me between sips of bathtub gin. “Stick with me and everything’ll be Jake.”

  Schmitty would bob around on the dance floor, soft shoeing for hours before collapsing on a barstool, his straw boater cockeyed and his plaid suit dotted with sweat. When he got tipsy on too many sidecars, he’d make eyes at me, and Val would laugh and tell him to stop trying to play the drugstore cowboy. Tucked away in that speakeasy, we could be cool kids and never have to worry about free throws or fluorescent lighting.

  Betsy ran her warm hand through my hair, settling her fingertips at the nape of my neck. “Are you okay?” she asked through a laugh. “You disappeared on me again. Where do you go?”

  I flashed Betsy my best grin. “Still thinking about that silky-smooth gelato.”

  Betsy giggled and put her lips to my ear. “Can I tell you a secret? I have the most adorbs boyfriend in the world.”

  I let that grin crystallize on my face and bit my tongue even though I wanted to tell her that wasn’t a secret. Real secrets weren’t sweet nothings you whispered in your arm candy’s ear. Real secrets are snarly little beasts that feast on your insides and poop out paranoia. They don’t fill you with warm fuzzies. They make you itch like a patient stuffed to the gills with morphine and leave you feeling like a phone dangling off the hook.

  Meadow shot me a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it eye roll. She couldn’t have known I was thinking about cruising down the interstate with Mattie McKenna, but she knew me well enough to know I’d just sold poor Betsy a loaf of baloney.

  ***

  I told Betsy the burger from Johnny Rockets didn’t sit well in the
old breadbasket so I could bail on the weed dealer’s party. I decided I’d rather lie on my bed and drown myself in the Cabaret soundtrack than rub elbows with a bunch of zozzled kids yapping over each other. None of the guys from the basketball team would smoke because we were all subject to random drug tests, but they weren’t afraid to drink themselves into a frenzy. The more shitfaced they got, the louder they got. Ryder, our starting point guard, had no sense of personal space after three or four shots. He’d shout right in everyone’s faces, sprinkling them with vodka-tinged spittle. I’d back away, trying to reestablish that customary one-foot bubble, but he’d always follow me, tilting his vast forehead toward mine.

  Most of the time I could handle that sort of thing, but tonight, just thinking about it made my head throb. I didn’t want to shrink into a ratty, vomit-stained couch while Ryder close-talked me to death about which broads he wanted to bang. I wanted to dance with Sally Bowles at the Kit Kat Klub. Instead, I pulled a pillow over my face and massaged my temples.

  “Willem, sweetie. You look positively consumed with teenage ennui.”

  My mother was the only person on earth who used my full first name. She was also the only person I knew who could throw a word like ennui into a mundane conversation and make it sound natural. If I threw around a word like that, I’d sound like a pretentious douchebag.

  “I’m just tired.”

  I felt her take a seat on the bed, the mattress sinking below my right leg. “I don’t believe you. Why aren’t you with the Stepford-wife-in-training and her pinched-face little friend?”

  “Please don’t call them that. I know you know their names.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I know their names. I’m trying to make you laugh, sweetie.”

  “You’re failing.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Did you finally tire of Betsy’s heroic devotion to All-American feminine ideals?”

  I threw the pillow at her, and she laughed. I would never tell her this, but I loved my mom’s cackle. When it rang through our house, it reminded me of traipsing through museum after museum with her as a kid, not even in grade school yet. I was probably happier back then. Little kids have nothing to hide.

  “She’s at some party. I didn’t feel like going.”

  “Well, good. You should spend time with your father and me tonight.”

  I exhaled a sarcastic “woo-hoo.”

  My mom cackled again. “Don’t play coy with me, Willem. A night out on the town with us is, hands down, more fun than lying on your bed in a pool of angst.”

  I sat up. “You’re going out?”

  “Of course we’re going out. Do you think when you’re not here we just sit around and twiddle our thumbs, worrying about whether our precious babe is facedown on the floor at some godforsaken frat party?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To Providence.” She winked at me the same way she used to wink at me when I was a little kid ready for adventure.

  “Is it some obnoxious coffeehouse thing? Because if it is I’m not going.”

  “Only one way to find out. Come on, Willem. Live a little.”

  The bored, lonely guy buried beneath my aloof-teenager-shell screamed at me to choose life. I ignored him and let my head plop back down the mattress. “Not worth the risk. You’re going to some awful poetry reading, I just know it.”

  “Suit yourself.” She left me to my ennui and headed downstairs.

  I put the pillow back over my face and fell asleep.

  A few hours later, I awoke when my phone buzzed on my nightstand—a text from Betsy.

  >Feeling better? Party is cray cray. You should check out the pics on LifeScape. Miss u oodles. XOXO

  For a million reasons, this little digital love note made me wish desperately that I’d gone with my parents to Providence. Any sort of distraction would’ve been better than lying in the dark reading clipped dispatches from a girl who thought she was in love with me when, in fact, she didn’t have any idea who I really was.

  And though I didn’t know it at the time, Mattie was already secretly living the dream. At that very moment, she was halfway through cracking a table of locks while her mentor withheld Thai food.

  So maybe there’s a tiny bit of truth to Mattie’s romantic notion of historical destiny. Because instead of planting that pillow back on my face, I restarted the Cabaret soundtrack and told myself this was the last night I’d spend wallowing in weltschmerz.

  I’ll never forget the first time I saw it. It wasn’t on TV or in a movie, it was right in front of my face. I was seven and my father had brought me to a traveling circus. I munched on roasted peanuts and greasy popcorn while I watched a parade of elephants. I giggled at the clowns and clapped for the trapeze artists as they swung from the top of the tent. And then a diminutive man took the center of the ring.

  He performed a classic water torture cell escape, which had been done many times and with more grace by a great many other performers. But I didn’t know that. All I knew was that time stopped in my child-mind when I watched him escape. Everything but him became a dull shadow. For three protracted minutes, he was the only thing that was real.

  – Akiko Miyake, Tokyo, January 31, 1976

  Mattie vs. Wil Wheaton

  The second my boss at the café told me to skedaddle, I headed to Grayton for day two of training.

  Miyu opened the door wearing striped pajamas. “I just woke up, and I need food. Go pick us up takeout.” She shoved two twenties into my hands.

  “I just came from Café Italiano,” I whined. “You couldn’t have called me?”

  “I don’t have your number, Girl Scout.”

  “Oh, right. Get me a pen.”

  Miyu returned with a pen and a takeout menu for a Thai restaurant. “I’ll call in the order so you don’t screw it up,” she said as I wrote down my cell number for her.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  The restaurant looked like a total dive, but I was so hungry by the time I got back to Miyu’s, I didn’t care if I was about to scarf something that a few cockroaches had crawled through. Miyu snatched the brown paper bag from my hand as soon as I stepped into the dining room.

  “Sit,” she commanded. I took a seat and realized that every padlock and box on the table had been re-locked. “You don’t eat until you’ve unlocked everything here,” she said as she handed me a fresh bobby pin.

  “You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me,” I whined. “It’ll take me all night.”

  “Then you better get started.” She pried open a box of garlic chicken, and the scent made my mouth water.

  “Was your mom this mean when she trained you?”

  “No questions,” she barked.

  I huffed and broke the bobby pin in two. I went after the Westin four-pin first. My empty stomach growled, and my sweaty fingers kept slipping against the bobby pin. I wanted to throw the padlock across the room, but I didn’t have very good aim, and I was afraid I might damage the exquisite antique hutch in the corner.

  “Focus, Girl Scout,” Miyu said before shoving a piece of chicken into her mouth. “Take a deep breath. Your life isn’t hanging in the balance. Yet.”

  I dried my sweaty hands on my jeans and took her advice. My stomach growled again, and I was about to give up when the lock popped open. The sound of it startled me, but Miyu didn’t look surprised. “Don’t stop now, Girl Scout. You’ve got a whole table to crack.”

  Despite my hunger and exhaustion—or perhaps because of it—I somehow found a rhythm. Something must have sunk in during the Night of Epic Lock Picking, because I conquered everything on the table in just under an hour.

  “Holy crap! I am amazing,” I shouted as I got up to do a victory dance. “I feel like I finally cracked the code.”

  “Congratulations,” Miyu deadpanned. “Though you’ve shown no natural aptitude for the ar
t of lock picking, you’ve now got a grasp on the basics.”

  “I think I’m allowed to be a little impressed with myself.”

  “If you say so. But you’re not even close to proficient. Each day that you come here to train, picking every lock on this table will be your first task.”

  I huffed again. “Whatever. Can I please eat now?”

  When I was halfway through scarfing a pile of Pad Thai, I took a moment to reflect on how I ended up in the dining room of a resentful stranger, picking my way through a spread of locks armed with just a bobby bin.

  The truth is, it’s at least sixty-two percent Wil Wheaton’s fault and fifteen percent my dad’s fault.

  By the time I was eleven, my poor father had exhausted a great deal of effort trying to interest me in Westerns.

  “You like old things, right Mattie?” he’d say. “Well, these are old movies about how life was a long time ago.”

  I did like old movies, just not Westerns. With the exception of True Grit, which I probably appreciated only because of my plucky namesake, I just couldn’t get into the outlandish machismo, the damsels in distress, and the cheesy-twangy tough-guy dialogue.

  “It’s not like the real Old West,” I’d try to explain to my dad. “It’s like a glorified fantasy version of the Old West. In the real Old West, all the prostitutes had STDs.”

  My dad did not appreciate explanations involving prostitutes and STDs coming from his eleven-year-old daughter. He would just sigh and shake his head and mumble something about the American education system.

  Besides Westerns, my dad’s interests included golf, expensive scotch, mowing our perfectly-maintained lawn, and washing and vacuuming his car. Though many of my peculiar interests had come and gone over the years (serenading my parents from the back seat with off-key renditions of patriotic songs, birding with a pair of binoculars the size of my head, needle pointing nonsensical wall hangings), the constants included history and, like most children of the aughts, television.